Alto Neuroscience raises $60M (equity + credit) to help fix the “trial and error” approach to psychiatric medication

Alto Neu­ro­science bags $25M for four Phase II drugs (End­points News): Anoth­er $25 mil­lion is flow­ing the way of a Cal­i­for­nia biotech attempt­ing to fix the “tri­al and error” sys­tem in neu­ro­science drug R&D. Alto Neu­ro­science picked up the cap­i­tal from Alpha Wave Ven­tures via an exten­sion to its Series B, bring­ing total equi­ty raised…

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Update: Playing videogames may be more cognitively beneficial than other forms of screentime like social media, watching videos/ TV

Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing time­ly brain & men­tal health news and a fun brain teas­er to put your tem­po­ral lobes to good use :-) #1. Study finds that play­ing videogames may be more cog­ni­tive­ly ben­e­fi­cial for chil­dren than oth­er forms of screen­time (social media, watch­ing videos/ TV) “Here, we esti­mat­ed the impact…

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Study finds mixed results of Adderall as cognitive enhancer (seems to boost emotion more than cognition)

Over the past 15 years there has been grow­ing aware­ness that many col­lege stu­dents with­out an ADHD diag­no­sis use ADHD drugs. On some cam­pus­es, rates of self-report­ed non-med­i­cal use have exceed­ed 30% of stu­dents. The pri­ma­ry rea­son stu­dents report tak­ing ADHD drugs is to enhance their aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance. And, the strong major­i­ty of students —…

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Q&A: What does the Facebook acquisition of CTRL-Labs mean for Neurotechnology and Augmented & Virtual Reality?

__________ While sit­ting at din­ner with an unsus­pect­ing friend, my phone blew up with odd­­­ly-late mes­sages from fel­low neu­rotech­nol­o­gy com­rades. CTRL-Labs announced their impend­ing acqui­si­tion by Face­book and inte­gra­tion into Face­book Real­i­ty Labs (respon­si­ble for Ocu­lus et al.), for enough mon­ey to buy my guilt-induc­ing­­ly-expen­­sive New York cof­fee for a mea­ger 550,000 years. Woah—so very many ques­tions. I…

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Forget thinking vs. feeling dichotomy. Think/ feel holistic brain functioning

Men­tal Math and the Fine-Tun­ing of Emo­tions (The Dana Foun­da­tion) “You often hear the word “cal­cu­lat­ing” used to describe some­one who always seems to act delib­er­ate­ly, guid­ed by rea­son rather than emo­tion. The idea behind this char­ac­ter­i­za­tion is that human nature strad­dles a deep divide between think­ing and feel­ing, but cur­rent research sug­gests oth­er­wise. Brain-imag­ing studies,…

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